Displaced poet will always have California in his heart

Eugene Gloria and a friend used to "occasionally" go fishing near Byron.

Tony Sauro

Eugene Gloria and a friend used to "occasionally" go fishing near Byron.

"I miss going to Stockton, if you can believe that," Gloria said from Greencastle, Ind.

Reconciling a sense of "displacement," exploring deep repositories of cultural and familial roots - especially his beloved father - and sustaining an abiding respect for historical lessons and legacies inform Gloria's elegiac view.

It's as evident in his mellow, gently reflective vocal tones - even from a distance of 2,136 miles - as it is in Gloria's three volumes of poetry and prose-poetry.

"That's the question I've been trying to grapple with in my work. This idea of 'displacement,' " said Gloria, 56, a native of the Philippines who grew up in San Francisco, attended college in California, Ohio and Oregon and has taught at Indiana's DePauw University for 14 years.

"I've made peace with living in Indiana. I like my house. I'm three blocks from campus. I walk to work. In a way, it's an ideal thing for a poet. I'm lonely for California. I miss San Francisco. I wish I could live there. A lot."

That's being rectified temporarily this week. Gloria visits Stockton for a Thursday poetry reading and some mentoring at University of the Pacific. In the early 20th century, Stockton - with a large, vibrant concentration of Filipino emigres - was called "Little Manila."

Gloria remembered "friends of the family. We had a nice troupe based out there."

He's devoted to ennobling that legacy.

"The work I do is to create a kind of presence in our imagination of Filipino-Americans," said Gloria, who once wrote in "secret" and wanted to be a lawyer. "I work within the realm of family folk narratives.

"One mentor used to tell me to honor our families, who we are, where we come from. That's the message we should abide by as we develop as poets, writers and human beings. A dialogue with the cultural past of Filipinos."

Gloria has been developing that conversation through the imprimatur of Penguin Books, a major and universally respected publishing company.

His first collection, "Drivers at the Short-Time Motel," was one of five selected - Louisiana poet Yusef Komunyakaa chose Gloria's - for inclusion in the 1999 National Poetry Series. It was published by Penguin in 2000. "Hoodlum Birds" (2006) and "My Favorite Warlord" (2012) followed. He's writing material for a fourth volume.

"I never envisioned I'd be published by Penguin," Gloria said. "I'm perfectly happy to be with small literary presses. Penguin was just a stroke of luck. I'm honored by that. It helped me get ... this first job. It helped out a lot."

There aren't very many consistently published Filipino-American poets.

However, "It's not as rare as one would think," said Gloria, mentioning Jessica Hagedorn, a poet and playwright born in Manila. "Carlos Bulosan," a Gloria poem, reflects on the 20th-century author. "I'm still deeply honored and certainly wouldn't want to squander it. There's no guarantee. I want to work hard to maintain it."

Born in Manila as the youngest of six children, Gloria arrived in San Francisco at age 8.

"I have really fond memories," said Gloria, who "always liked to write poetry, but in secret. I grew up near Golden Gate Park. I remember going to the beach and playing sports with my siblings and friends."

His mom, Leonor, who died in 2011, worked at The Presidio. His dad Isidro (Sid), an attorney and Filipino community activist who had worked for the Philippine government, remains a source of poetic inspiration.

"I loved my father," Gloria said of Sid, who died in 2013 at 90. "He was a big influence. When he was suffering through dementia and losing his memory, it was very sad to watch. He was a big figure. The life of the party. Always telling stories."

A St. Ignatius College Prep graduate, Gloria didn't comprehend the city's poetic legacy (the Beat Generation) until studying English at San Francisco State University, where Allen Ginsberg attended one of his film classes.

It was a turbulent time that still prompts pondering.

"Some people think that, because we have a black president, we don't have racism any more," Gloria said. "It's a complicated idea, the issue of race. I grew up in San Francisco during a time when it was 'Say it loud. I'm black and I'm proud. Say it loud. I'm brown and I'm proud.'

"Am I exclusively a Filipino-American a poet, where my books are in the 'ethnic' section? Or just a poet whose books are in the 'general' section of bookstores?"

He recalled living near Union and Larkin streets and "walking through North Beach every morning." The first time Gloria read his poetry publicly, in 1980 at a Polk Street cafe, Bob Kaufman, a "beat" poet originally from New Orleans, was there: "I was very nervous."

He was impressed by Bolusan (1913-66), whose "America in the Heart" (1946) was set partly in Stockton; Hagedorn; Fresno's Philip Levine and his Detroit-bred blue-collar-workers' ethic; Robert Frost, Derek Walcott; Seamus Heaney; Walt Whitman; and James Wright.

Gloria earned a master's degree at Miami University in Ohio, studied for two years with Hawaii-born Garrett Hongo at University of Oregon and received a Fulbright Fellowship, partial inspiration for his first Penguin book, in 1992.

His first poem, "Falling in Love With Jenny," was published in the winter 1990 Haight Ashbury Literary Journal,

Gloria, a professor at DePauw, where wife Karen Singson works in the development office, said "bad" educational experiences can be a poetry turn-off. So March is good.

"National Poetry Month is a wonderful effort," he said. "I applaud all of that. We've lost track of poetry as part of public culture. It's seen as being a part of academia. It's an uphill battle. I'm happy with the way it is. I'm not in it for the money. It's not gonna make me famous."

Or dislocated from his roots.

"I go 'home' regularly," he said of San Francisco. "I can't really imagine going back permanently. I'd love to have a little crash pad, though. It's just so expensive."

Contact Tony Sauro at (209) 546-8267 or tsauro@recordnet.com. Follow him on Twitter @tsaurorecord.

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